The Reverend John Alexander Dowie: 6 ft. tall, 145 lbs,
with a full beard and high forehead. “He had a voice the
volume of which would almost rival a locomotive. He
didn’t like dudes, yet he was dudishly attired himself
.” (Description by a 19th century Chicago Tribune
reporter.)

The story of John Alexander Dowie is another example of
the dedication and perseverance to an individual belief
that has driven so many Scottish men and women
throughout the centuries. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland,
on May 24, 1847, the Reverend Dowie started life within
a family of some religious devotion; his father worked
as a tailor and also labored part-time as a preacher.

Though the family moved to Australia in 1860, John
Alexander Dowie returned to Scotland in 1868 to study at
the University of Edinburgh. He later traveled back to
Australia where he sought and achieved ordination in the
Congregational Church. Established as a pastor to a
congregation in Melbourne, where he also married and had
two children, it may have appeared that the Reverend
Dowie had set down roots. However, the Reverend
eventually became dissatisfied with his denomination and
once again took to the sea to travel to the United
States, arriving in San Francisco in 1890.

A belief evolved within Reverend Dowie that God had
called him to a ministry of Divine healing. The message
he felt compelled to spread was three fold: salvation,
holy living and divine healing. Through speaking
engagements, he arrived on the scene in Chicago by the
summer of 1890 to the willing ears of a convention of
Christian workers in Western Springs. Dowie was reported
to have said, and we can only imagine with booming
enthusiasm, “I would rather go to Heaven than Chicago,
but I must do my work.”

In Chicago, with a rabble of followers, he built a small
church just outside the gates of the popular Columbian
Exposition (circa 1893). The sign on the church read
“Zion Tabernacle”, a lofty name that might have given a
clue to his vision to some day grow beyond this meager
structure often referred to as “The Little Wooden Hut.”

Around the same time, a popular traveling act visited
across the street: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
Together, Reverend Dowie and Buffalo Bill made for
interesting fodder for the reporters of the time. When a
chronically ill cousin of Buffalo Bill, Sadie Cody,
sought the aid of Reverend Dowie, the Tribune reported,
“She was prayed for and received immediate healing.”
However, the Tribune soon became Reverend Dowie’s enemy.
One reporter described him as 6 ft. tall, 145 lbs with a
full beard and high forehead. “He had a voice the volume
of which would almost rival a locomotive. He didn’t like
dudes, yet he was dudishly attired himself.” Newspaper
articles became more and more vicious from this time
forward.

As attendance grew, the Reverend rented larger and
larger buildings to accommodate his followers. A church
at 16th and Michigan that seated 3,500 was insufficient
to contain the crowds. The Chicago Auditorium available
for $300 a service always filled, and in one year alone
Dowie baptized 10,000 converts. At 12th and Michigan,
Zion Tabernacle rented a large office building (still in
existence) for $25,000 a year that became the church
headquarters. In this building, Dowie started a school
and printed literature that included a magazine called
“Leaves of Healing.” Alternatively, the Tribune kept up
a constant stream of attacks against Dowie and his
message. A reporter wrote, “His voice is a consumptive
treble which grows more and more tiresome with every
sentence. His gestures are those of a man fighting a
windmill.”

Zion Temple

Eventually, a building called Zion Temple, located at
62nd and Stoney Island, became the home of Dowie and his
followers. The special services held in a large
auditorium always started at three o’clock on Sunday
afternoon. Regular services and prayers for the sick
were conducted every day. In the vicinity of Zion
Temple, the church bought several buildings that they
called “divine healing homes.” People in need of prayer
could purchase a room and board for $8 to $12 per week.
People literally came from around the world seeking
help. The Tribune said, “They are sick or lame or
maimed, and they pay these prices to be near the
fountain of healing which they believe to be welling out
of the fingers of the ‘little divine’ with the smooth
tongue and insinuating manner.” Sadly, many of the
desperate were critically ill and ended their life in
the Healing Homes.

Not surprising, in June of 1895, Chicago Police arrested
Dowie for violating hospital ordinances. The Healing
Homes, the City of Chicago purported, fell under the
ordinance of operating a hospital. A report said, “His
healing Homes in Woodlawn are run in violation of law,
and though notified to apply for permits he scornfully
refuses - warrant is issued and the Faker is locked up -
finally released on bail to appear this morning.” Dowie
suffered arrest more than 100 times, often taken out of
his Sunday services in handcuffs.

In spite of law enforcement’s attempts and the continued
vicious reports by the Tribune, Dowie’s followers grew
into the thousands and gained him worldwide recognition.
In hopes of fulfilling his dream to create his own
Utopia, Dowie and Zion Temple pursued the purchase of
550 acres of land in Blue Island at a cost of $500,000
and went so far as placing it under contract. When Dowie
discovered he would not be able to exercise complete
control over the land use, he canceled the contract.
Instead, not more than a year later in 1896, Dowie made
a bold move and formally organized the Christian
Catholic Church. “Ministers were ordained and churches
started in practically every major city and country,
with missionaries going to China, South Africa,
Switzerland, Germany, England, France, Scandinavia,
Australia, Jamaica, Mexico, and other places.”

In 1899, Dowie presented a lecture to medical and dental
students entitled “Doctors, Drugs and Devils.” Dowie did
not believe in medical science and preached that items,
such as tobacco, liquor, pork, and shellfish, were
wrong. Coffee and chewing gum were frowned upon as well.
Afterwards, two thousand students rioted, broke windows
and stormed the lecture hall. The police stood by and
only arrested a few students.

Zion City

Dowie remained devoted to his vision to create and live
within his own community of believers. When he heard
that land might be available 45 miles north of Chicago,
Dowie and some of his leaders, dressed as itinerants,
traveled to Waukegan, hired rigs, and surveyed the land.
From 40 farmers they took options on 6,400 acres paying
what the Tribune said were “fancy prices.” Burton J.
Ashley, a city planner and also a believer, laid out the
land into subdivisions. The city was to be ten miles
square and complete with water, sewer, lighting, and a
rapid transit system for a population of 200,000.
Washington, D.C. and Zion, Illinois are the only cities
that were designed before they were built.

On New Year’s Day, 1900, Dowie announced his plans to
build Zion City, “named after the mountain upon which
Jerusalem is built and where Christ is said to one day
return.” It was estimated that 15,000 followers lived in
Chicago and included many prominent people. Six thousand
followers leased land for 1,100 years and pledged to
follow all the rules. In Zion City there would be no
theaters, dance halls, doctors, or drug stores. “There
shall be no butcher shops, no gun-powder factories, no
saloons, no intoxicating liquors, no circus, no theater,
no cigarettes, no tobacco, no opium, no drugs, and no
physicians. His people must not eat eels, rabbits, or
swine. The oyster is declared to be unholy.”

Employment in Zion

To provide a means of employment to the people of Zion
City, Dowie brought lace workers from England and
started a lace factory. There was also a large
department store and between it and the lace factory,
some 3,000 followers found work.

Lace Factory in Zion

Perhaps the most
successful venture was the Baking and Candy Division.
The Baking Division produced a line of crackers,
cookies, pies and cakes.
However, leaders looking for a
distinctive product that related to the city’s
dedication to the teachings of the Bible, selected the
fig fruit as their choice product. The Zion Fig Pie was
born, a product “that was to make Zion a household word
throughout much of the United States through the
1950's.”

Shiloh Tabernacle

Completed in 1900, Shiloh Tabernacle, a massive wooden
building, sat 8,ooo worshipers and a choir of 500.
Though there was no heat or air-conditioning, the
building always filled to the rafters. In 1902, the
building ,where many of the male residents lived while
their own homes were being built and before their
families arrived, converted to the Zion Home for
visitors. It contained 326 sleeping rooms, parlors, and
a terrace on the roof for hot summer days. Above the
terrace lofted a sixty-foot tower where a bell rang each
day to call people to pray. Also in 1902, Dowie built
for himself, at a cost of $90,000, a house of 25 rooms
filled with expensive furniture. It was called Shiloh
House.

In 1904, Dowie began a world campaign, but by 1905,
things were falling apart for Dowie and for Zion City.
Dowie became ill and suffered the first of several
strokes in Union Station in Chicago as he prepared to
leave for Mexico. Zion City could not support an
oppressive debt of almost 6 million dollars. Zion City
bank was constantly under siege by the State of Illinois
and Dowie refused to let state auditors access to review
the books. The Public Health Department never ceased
investigations, and, of course, the Tribune remained a
constant source of harassment. Zion City fell into
receivership. Marshall Field bought the candy factory,
the lace factory, and 26 acres of Zion City land. The
dream was almost over by 1905.

The Reverend John Alexander Dowie always lived as he had
preached - never saw a doctor, never took a drug. On
March 9, 1907, he died, as did his dream. To mourn his
passing, followers filled the massive Shiloh Tabernacle
for the last time and a choir of 500 sang the great
songs of the Church. The Reverend’s coffin was carried a
few hundred feet to the Lake Mound cemetery and buried;
his wife Jane lays aside him.

The current day Church follows the Wesleyan tradition,
serves approximately 1,100 members, as well as numerous
mission partners worldwide. To this day, they maintain
Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church incorporation “to
enhance both the local church and the worldwide
missions.”